Coming into teaching from a graduate program in anthropology where the concern was not on how to teach but on how to research, the idea of evaluating the knowledge needed to effectively teach much less teach with technology is novel to this author. Thus while the overall importance of Mishra’s and Koehler’s (2006) work on Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) towards understanding the practice of teaching with technology is evident to this author, the actual process of implementation within the actual class design was difficult to visualize. To clarify the steps to how Mishra’s and Koehler’s model is applied and is implemented within course design, Gomez’s (2015) illustrated applying TPACK to a case study of a single 8th grade teacher and two social studies classroom. Using data collected through classroom observations, formal and interviews, and the analysis of artifacts produced, Gomez used a constant comparative approach to organize the data along themes which related to the
intersections of TPACK: technology knowledge (TK), content knowledge (CK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), technology content knowledge (TCK), technology pedagogical knowledge (TPK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) and examined when and how these intersected within the framework of the class. Interestingly , when interviewing the teacher of the class, he offered up that he was designing his class not with TPACK in mind but rather as a way to reach his desired goal – to teach students to think historically – and that technology is only a tool that helps him to engage them in doing this by helping him to shape the lesson in a way that meets this goal.

Overall this is only a single case study so aspects of design towards implementation are bound to vary by teacher, school and students. The act of selecting this class and teacher was not random, rather the teacher was recommended to the researcher as someone who uses technology regularly in the classroom. In addition, the school utilized was a K-12 private school withone-to-one technology and thus it this scenario presents one where there is a great degree of technological access and affordances which may not be available to all teachers and schools. Gomez recognizes these limitations and approapriately makes no generalizations from these oberservations and interviews which should be broadly applied.

Despite this, this articles is offering one example of how in TPACK might be implemented in course design. Based on what Gomez (2015) observed, he does acknledge that this case example does breaks down the idea that the components of TPACK must be intersecting concurrently. Rather he notes “TPACK no longer becomes the intersection of these three types of knowledge, but rather it becomes the layered combination of these three
types of knowledge” (p. 295). In addition, Gomez (2015) highlights how teachers may approach TPACK very differently in implementation as the teacher of the 8th grade classes studied indicated that “teaching effectively with technology (TPACK) begins with an understanding of what he wants his students to learn” (p. 296). Therefore he frames TPACK within a framework of what he wants students to know. Gomez presents that this may be a common way that teachers may implement TPACK and therefore “understanding the role students play in making decisions about using technology in instruction” should be considered more within the TPACK design (p. 296).